I love his wine.
I love her art.
Art and wine merged – on a double magnum of America’s best Zinfandel!
“And now, for the first time ever, they are available together!”
Sounds a bit cheesy, like an infomercial offering two things merged, which previously had only ever been available separately.
But trust me, this pairing of wine and art is original. And what a stunning gift it makes.
To honor the sounds of Joni Mitchell, Layla Fanucci etched and painted this portrait of the singer on a double magnum of Rob’s 2005 Monte Rosso Zinfandel.
The Wine: Charter Oak Zinfandel, my all-time favorite Zin, is made by Rob Fanucci, in St. Helena. By day, Rob is a lawyer; on weekends and nights, he is an old-fashioned, hands-on winemaker, like his grandfather Guido Ragghianti, who taught him how to make wine.
Until now, Rob’s wine has only been available in 750 mL bottles, but for this new, husband-wife, wine-art project, Rob is bottling double magnums of his top wine.
The Art: Until recently, Rob’s hyper-talented wife, Layla, mostly painted cityscapes on canvasses so large that you needed your own personal cathedral in order to be able to hang one. These are stunning, large images. But now Layla has started to work on nano-sized (at least for her!) projects – personalized, etched-and-hand-painted wine labels – of any image you ask her to paint – applied to Rob’s double magnums.
So now you can get the best of Rob and Layla.
The pair will introduce their collaborative work at ZinArt, a casual party they are hosting at the winery on Charter Oak Ave., in St. Helena, Saturday May 24. The party starts about 4 pm and runs until they run out of Rob’s wine. Rob and Layla have asked me to extend an invitation to readers of napaman.com, so we’ll see ya there.
In the interest of remaining an honest, objective, reporter, I need to disclose my relationship with Rob and Layla, who over the last five years have become close friends.
Rob Fanucci, winemaker
Five years ago, I fell head-over-heels crazy for Rob’s Zinfandel when I discovered it at a tasting. It was so profound that I approached Rob, asking if I might help him pick fruit and make wine at the next harvest. This annual event has become one of the highlights for me of living in Napa Valley. And the Zinfandel and Petite Sirah that Rob make are among my all-time favorites. He has a knack for turning these otherwise badass, high-alcohol bruisers into elegant wines. As you know, “elegant” is not a word commonly associated with Zinfandel, or Petite Sirah.
Layla Fanucci, artist
As for Layla, she has an infectious spirit, a boundless amount of energy and do-goodness about her. For 25 years, she taught guitar; then one day, eight years ago, she put down her guitar and picked up a paintbrush and started to paint. Like Forrest Gump starting to run and run and run some more, she hasn’t stopped painting since.
Layla is set to start painting her largest-ever canvass – measuring 14 feet wide. “It will take me a year to complete!” she predicts.
For all these years, Layla has painted outside on a back porch, braving cold winds on winter days, and braving birds on warm summer days, which try to hit her colorful linen canvass targets with their droppings. Friends can hardly get through to Layla when she is in her paint trance; in this mode, you can’t stop her, or peel the paint tube out of her hands.
Today, two galleries represent Layla nationwide – Walter Wickiser Gallery in New York (210 11th Ave # 303, Tel: 212-941-1817) and Christopher Hill Gallery in St. Helena (1235 Main St., St. Helena, Tel: 707-963-0272).
Layla’s interpretation of Wall Street, NY.
Layla has two basic themes; she does massive cityscapes with layers of paint in which the light and color seem to radiate from out the back of the painting. She has painted such diverse cities as Barcelona, Paris, Berlin, Istanbul, Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Florence.
The Zinfandel Mind # 8
Her other theme is a series of richly colorful, hallucinogenic images, which bear a common wine theme. She calls the series, with numerical coefficients, things like Zinfandel Mind # 11, or Zinfandel Mind #8.
Wanting to bring her art and Rob’s wine closer together, Layla recently got the idea to put her images on his wine bottles.
The project has been an immediate success and as Layla is willing to customize the images she puts on bottles for clients, there appears to be no end to the commissioned bottles she may etch and paint.
Here’s how it works: if you buy a double magnum (that’s four bottles of Rob’s killer Zinfandel) and Layla finishes the label with one of her own images, the bottle is $1200.
If you give Layla a photo of someone you’d like painted on the label (makes a great birthday, wedding, anniversary, or Christmas gift), the cost is slightly higher. How much? As they say on menus for the daily catch – price available on request.
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Great art (Layla’s), great wine (Rob’s), commemorating great naan (Fabulous Flats) and a great guy (Sam), my bakery partner.
In fact, I couldn’t think of a more original, or more personal, gift than Layla’s painted bottles to give to my bakery partner, Sam, who turned 60 in February.
I also wanted to commemorate a significant milestone in the bakery we co-founded four years ago – we’ve just baked our 30,000,000th hand-stretched naan (Indian flatbread) after a year of production!
So I hired Layla to personalize a bottle of Charter Oak Zin and apply a hand-painted portrait of Sam holding a package of our International Fabulous Flats™ Tandoori Naan.
Rob filled the bottle with his glorious 2005 Charter Oak Monte Rosso Vineyard Zinfandel. The fruit comes from 100+-year-old vines on a slope in Sonoma County. Only a handful of old-time winemakers can get their hands on this premium-quality hillside fruit, today owned by Gallo.
Sam Ajmera, my bakery partner, proudly displays his birthday gift. “The bottle made turning 60 painless!” says Sam.
Sam was tickled with the gift, as Charter Oak Zinfandel is one of his favorite-ever wines.
Or as they might say in a MasterCard TV ad:
Wine: $200 (equivalent of four bottles of Charter Oak Zin)
Original, personalized, etched and hand-painted label: $1,000
Total cost: $1,200
Look on the face of the person you gift: PRICELESS.
Layla and Rob Fanucci
Going forward, any etched bottles, which Layla hand paints, will be filled with Rob’s exquisite 2006 Napa Valley Zinfandel, grown on his family’s vineyard in St. Helena. This wine is tweaked with a touch of nearby Fulton Vineyard Petite Sirah.
For the record, Rob bottled some of this 2006 Petite Sirah on its own (only 125 cases of this exceptional elixir) and every time I taste it, I slap my forehead, recalling how good it is. In fact, I have yet to spit out this wine any of the dozen times that I have now professionally tasted it.
If you are free Saturday, May 24, come to the ZinArt party. Layla’s canvasses will be on display (and for sale). Rob will be pouring his wines, also for sale.
If you wish to read more about these local art and wine heroes, go to:
www.laylafanucci.com or www.charteroakwine.com
As a PS, let me add these tasting notes to the wines that Rob will be pouring at ZinArt. Because even if you choose not to get an etched, hand-painted double magnum, the wine, in 750 mL format, is a MUST HAVE for your cellar.
Tasting Notes
Overall, I believe that the 2006 Charter Oak wines may turn out to be the single greatest vintage Rob has have ever produced. There is a purity of fruit, a finesse and elegance, which are uncommon even in his normally marvelous wines, which show a balance not typical of most California Zins.
In my opinion, Rob’s 2006 Zinfandels surpass his previous Zin zeniths. And he has knocked the ball right out of the park with his 2006 Petite Sirah.
In fact, the 2006 Charter Oak Petite Sirah is one of the best wines that Rob has ever made. For sure, it is the best Not-Zinfandel that he has ever made, hands down.
Even though this wine has recently been bottled, it is an expressive, big-but-surprisingly-balanced wine. Tons of ripe black raspberry on the nose and palate; there is a pleasing crescendo of ripe fruit flavors through the swallow and then a hint of dark, 70% cocoa and a whisper of black cherry on the finish. I scored this Petite Sirah 97 points, but for the life of me, I can’t explain why I didn’t rate it 100.
(What is it with wine writers that forces us to restrain our enthusiasm for a “lesser grape” like Petite Sirah, saving the really big, perfect scores for Cabernet, or Chateauneuf du Pape?
When I think about it now, at the time of writing this piece, I have never tasted a more perfect Petite Sirah… so YOU go figure what the score should be!)
Rob’s 2006 Charter Oak Napa Valley Zinfandel is made with fruit from vines planted in St. Helena, where his grandfather planted vines nearly 100 years ago. Stumpy and spindly (the vines, not his grandfather!), they have been pruned to produce small, highly concentrated, grapes. This wine has a generous hint of ripe blackberries and a spicy, tweaky finish from the addition of some killer Fulton Petite Sirah. 96 points.
Rob’s 2006 Charter Oak Monte Rosso Zinfandel, made with fruit from the famed Monte Rosso vineyard, in Sonoma County, has bright red and black fruit flavors, shows no prunish edge (in some vintages, Rob adds second- or even third-pass fruit, but not in 2006 and it shows). 95 points.
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